Emil Lederer: Discussion Contribution on Coal Mining (1920)

This recorded commission speaking turn addresses investment guarantees within the proposed socialization of coal mining. Lederer challenges Rathenau’s formulation, endorses Hilferding’s objections, and concludes by supporting Vogelstein’s rejection of an interest guarantee. His central concern is the relationship between private control of investment decisions and public responsibility for their financial consequences.

Lederer first asks who can judge whether an investment should proceed. Private enterprises possess the relevant documentation and control the technical apparatus; consequently, they would remain the experts whose assessments carry decisive weight. Formal approval would therefore depend on the firms requesting investment. The problem is not merely inadequate oversight, but the dependence of the approving authority on those whose proposals it must evaluate.

Deshalb würde ich es für außerordentlich bedenklich halten und, ich möchte beinahe sagen, gerade für eine Sozialisierung merkwürdig, eine Zinsgarantie für diejenigen Beträge zu geben, die heute bei der freien Wirtschaft jeder auf seine eigene Kappe nehmen muß.

English translation: For that reason I would consider it exceedingly questionable and, I would almost say, particularly strange in the context of socialization, to provide an interest guarantee for those sums for which, under the free economy today, everyone must bear responsibility themselves.

The contrast exposes an incongruity: socialization could guarantee returns on investments whose risks private investors currently bear themselves, while leaving decisive technical knowledge in private hands.

Lederer then considers an unresolved case: the Reich Coal Council might lack sufficient competence to approve an investment yet also lack grounds to reject it. Although he mentions the danger to paragraph 12, he explicitly treats this as secondary. His principal objection concerns uncertain costs and outcomes, assessed through investors’ potentially optimistic assumptions.

Ich möchte mich Herrn Dr. Vogelstein anschließen, daß von einer Zinsgarantie keine Rede sein kann.

English translation: I would like to join Dr. Vogelstein in maintaining that an interest guarantee is out of the question.

The intervention’s relevance lies in this compact institutional critique: an interest guarantee would not resolve uncertainty but shift its financial consequences without overcoming dependence on private expertise.